


Unnecessary Things

by HotAndColdAF



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 12:02:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13833894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HotAndColdAF/pseuds/HotAndColdAF
Summary: Ulaz explains exactly one of Shiro's scars to him.Or, sometimes you just wanna derail some angst into some meaningless fluff, you get me?





	Unnecessary Things

Shiro almost couldn't believe his ears. It had taken him _weeks_ to work up the nerve to ask Ulaz about his scars, and now Ulaz was shooting the idea down almost as soon as he could bring it up?

"You really don't know where most of them came from?" he asked incredulously, taking another step closer to where Ulaz was seated on the edge of his bed. He'd wanted privacy for this. Apparently that wasn't actually going to be necessary.

"I know _where_ they come from," Ulaz replied. "But there was never much to learn from watching gladiator matches, and so I never made a habit of doing so. The precise cause of each wound is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I could make educated guesses based on the marks, but it would be a pointless exercise."

Shiro frowned at that. It wasn't the answer he'd been hoping for, but Ulaz was right; if educated guessing was good enough, he wouldn't be asking in the first place. But there were still some marks left on his body that he was sure hadn't come from the arena. If anything, it was those thin, precise lines that worried him the most. So he pressed on. "What about the other ones? The surgical scars."

"Those I do know the causes of." He said it bluntly, like admitting that wasn't also admitting his part in putting them there. But then he frowned. "They are better left forgotten."

"I want to know," Shiro insisted. "I want to understand what happened to me."

"There is nothing to understand. What was done to you was cruelty disguised as curiosity and nothing more. Other than your arm and related necessities, nothing was permanently removed or altered, I can promise you that much. You will gain nothing from hearing more details."

Shiro felt his blood run cold, and a shudder ran up his spine. Nothing was _permanently_ removed or altered. That meant, then, there were things that had been _temporarily_...?

Maybe Ulaz was right. Maybe it _was_ better not to know.

But then Ulaz frowned and continued, "...No. I forgot. There was one other thing we removed. Here." Shiro stayed frozen in place, not even daring to breathe, as Ulaz reached out and traced a line on his right side, starting a few inches below where the still-purple mark Haggar had left on him in their last encounter was. Shiro knew the exact scar he was indicating. He'd spent a lot of time mulling over that one, trying to guess why they would've cut him open _there_ , only to come up empty. "It was a very curious incident. You suddenly became violently ill, without apparent cause. Our scans traced the source to a small organ here, attached to your digestive system. It lacked any apparent function, and so we decided to simply remove it, rather than waste time experimenting with other treatment methods."

Shiro stared blankly for a moment. That sounded an awful lot like.... "You... removed my appendix? Are you serious?"

Ulaz's frown deepened. "Were our scans wrong? Does it actually have some use?"

"No," Shiro answered with a shake of his head. "That's not it. The appendix is an evolutionary holdover. It doesn't really do anything anymore. But it can get infected, and when that happens, we just... take it out. It's a standard procedure." He placed a hand over the area in question, and then added, quietly, "Normal."

He went silent after that, and Ulaz waited patiently for him to finish his journey through his thoughts. After a while, Shiro suddenly looked back up at him and spoke again. "You know what the funny part is?" he asked in a voice that suggested the next thing he was going to say wasn't actually very funny at all. "If the appendix isn't taken out fast enough, it can burst, and the survival rate goes down pretty sharply after that. So that's another one I owe you."

"You do not owe me anything," Ulaz responded, almost automatically. It was an argument they'd had time and time again, and right now, Shiro didn't feel like rehashing it, so he simply shook his head and left it at that. He sat down wordlessly next to Ulaz on the bed, and after a short pause, Ulaz continued, "I am glad to know that we took the correct action and there won't be future complications."

Shiro leaned against Ulaz, and the Galra shifted to put an arm around him. It was a comforting gesture, and Shiro gladly leaned into it further, resting his head on his partner's chest. "I'm glad, too. It'd be pretty embarrassing to go through all that just to die from a burst appendix."

"Yes. A very ignoble end," Ulaz agreed dryly.

Shiro gave a humorless chuckle in response, before letting the conversation die off. After a few moments with no reply, Ulaz pulled him onto his lap and wrapped his arms fully around him.

He nuzzled against Shiro's hair as he spoke. "When you asked to speak with me in private, I thought you had something very different in mind."

Oh. Oops. Shiro ducked his head in embarrassment. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think I'm in the mood tonight."

"I know," Ulaz answered calmly, seemingly unperturbed by Shiro pulling his head away. "You do not joke about death when all is well. But do you still intend to spend the night here?"

"Would you mind?"

"Not at all. You are always welcome here."

"Thanks." Shiro shifted in Ulaz's lap so he could more easily look him in the eye. "Thanks for putting up with me, too. I know you don't have to."

"I enjoy 'putting up with you.' It isn't a bother to spend time with the one I love."

He always said that so bluntly, like it was the most normal, natural thing in the universe. Shiro smiled and slipped a hand around the back of Ulaz's neck to draw him down into a kiss. "I love you, too, big guy. ...But you're still not going to tell me about the other scars, are you?"

Even though Shiro had released his hold on him, Ulaz didn't straighten back up, keeping his face close to Shiro's upturned one. "No. I have already hurt you enough. Revisiting that will only hurt you worse. Even the benign one has made you upset enough already."

"I'm not upset about losing my appendix. It's kind of a relief, actually, knowing that's all it is."

"But you are upset nonetheless."

"I'm just... surprised, I guess. I wasn't expecting it to be anything actually good for me," Shiro said as he tucked himself back against Ulaz's chest.

Ulaz looked up at the ceiling and remained silent for a moment, like he was deciding carefully on what to say. "...Do not mistake it for a kindness. If you were not Champion, you would probably have been left to die."

Shiro frowned. "Does that kind of thing happen a lot?"

Ulaz lowered his head again, resting his chin on top of Shiro's head. "Not particularly. Most species do not have to contend with their own organs trying to kill them."

Despite it all, Shiro laughed. "That's just us, huh?"

"Mostly. Every new thing I hear about the resilience of humans impresses me more."

"I think you're just easily impressed."

"It is more likely that impressing me simply comes easily to you," Ulaz said, raising a hand to stroke Shiro's hair.

Shiro leaned into the broad palm's movement and laughed again. "You're shameless."

"Of course," Ulaz replied easily. "How could I ever be ashamed of loving you?"

"You just have an answer for everything, don't you?" Shiro asked back with a bemused sigh, and then he gently extricated himself from Ulaz's embrace and got to his feet. "I should get going. I have a lot of things to do. I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yes. I look forward to it." Ulaz rose to his feet as well, towering easily over Shiro even as he leaned down to give him another kiss. "I love you."

Shiro rose up on his tiptoes to accept the kiss, and a smile spread across his features as he settled back down afterward. "I love you, too."

**Author's Note:**

> FUN FACT: Your appendix does actually do something! It acts as a safe haven for good bacteria that lives in your intestines on the occasions that your body needs to clear your intestines out because of illness or whatever! But that's not the kind of thing Shiro would know about.


End file.
